SHIPPING OUTLOOK.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 March 1921, Page 3

SHIPPING OUTLOOK.

RECORD SLUMP COMING. SERIOUS POSSIBILITIES AHEAD. By Telegraph.—Pfess Assn.—Copyright. Sydney, Feb. 28. Sir Henry Sammon, a leading Hull shipowner, who is en route to New Zealand in search of trout fishing, takes a gloomy view of the shipping outlook. He declared that the depression was just coming and the shipping of the world was confronted with the greatest slump that, had ever been seen. In consequence of the enormous shipbuilding programmes in England and America, already there were six or seven millions of tons laid up in English and American ports. Already England had filled up her losses and had now rather more tonnage than in 1914, while America had eight or nine million tons more than before the war. Already the cancelled building orders were enormous. Sir H. Sammon believes the days ahead hold very serious possibilities and that it will take many years to work off the surplus tonnage and get back to the position of balance. Sir Henry expressed himself very candidly over the way things were run in Australia. He declared that all the white men he saw on the wharf could be gentlemen if the country was run rightly, instead of that they were doing niggers’ work and doing it “darned badly”. Australia was a black man’s country and could be developed tremendously with black labor, but if things went on as they were the continent would pass to somebody else as sure as the sun rose.